Cat food conversations are littered with passionate opinions concerning whether or not cats should eat like they do in the wild or if they should avoid carbs, if they should consume dry food for better dental health or if they should eat wet food for better hydration, and the like. For the average cat owner, the ongoing debates make it challenging to figure out what a healthy diet looks like for a domestic cat. To find the best food for your cat, it’s essential to figure out which opinions are rooted in science, which are long-standing myth, and which are somewhere in between.

We spent 300 hours researching the cat food industry and digging deep into the science of what cats need for their optimal diet. We surveyed 97 veterinary professionals and 437 cat owners; we read dozens of articles and studies; and we analyzed the ingredients of more than 1,700 cat food formulas — all to discover what matters most in picking out the best cat food.

We concluded that quality ingredients — that is, whole proteins that are free of harmful or controversial substances — are the one most important characteristic of the best cat food formulas. Based on our extensive research, we designed a method for reviewing cat food and finding products made with quality ingredients and produced by reliable brands.

We examined more than 100 brands. Only 37 of them produced at least one approved formula.

To illustrate the ingredient disparity between brands, we put together a graphic that compares the first 10 ingredients of popular grocery brands and those in the approved formulas from one of our favorite recommended brands. The results speak for themselves.

Best Cat Food 2017

A Note on Recalls

Recalls do happen, even to brands with high standards. But think of it this way: The average domestic cat lives to be 12-15 years old (in human years). If your favorite brand of cat food averages two recalls every five years, your cat would have to successfully dodge four to six recalls over the course of its life.

Your cat may have nine lives, but you shouldn’t gamble six of them on food from an unreliable brand.

That’s why we took a hard stance when it came to brands with multiple recalls. In some cases, a history of recalls was very clear. In other cases, deciding whether or not to remove a brand was really difficult. For example, one of the decisions we struggled with was how to handle brands that were owned or manufactured by larger pet food corporations — particularly when that larger corporation had a history of recalls.

After many hours of research and much debate, we decided to exclude all brands owned by pet food corporations with a history of recalls, since we could not guarantee that their acquisition or change in ownership had not had a negative impact on their manufacturing processes. This may mean that some brands with quality ingredients and sound manufacturing were cut at this stage, but we feel much more comfortable erring on the side of caution.